On the practical (read "transformational") level, the Gospel message of Jesus and the Twelve-Step message of Bill Wilson are largely the same. The first foundational connection is that addiction can be a metaphor for what the biblical tradition called sin. It is quite helpful to see sin, like addiction, as a very destructive disease, instead of merely something that is culpable, punishable, and "makes God unhappy." If sin indeed makes God unhappy, it is because God loves us, desires nothing more than our happiness, and wills the healing of our disease. The Twelve Steps reconnect the essential ties between vulnerability, healing, and love.
More and more I'm convinced that when the great medieval spiritual teachers talked so much about attachment, they were really talking about addiction. We are all attached and addicted in some way. At the very least, we are addicted to our compulsive dualistic patterns of thinking, to our preferred self-image, and to the unworkable programs for happiness we first developed in childhood. In short, each of us is addicted to our way of thinking. This is perfectly obvious once we consider it, but we do not tend to think about the way we think!
~R. Rohr
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